Mayors discuss crime prevention tactics during Essence Festival

Crime was on the minds of hundreds gathered at the Essence Festival today in the Morial Convention Center.

The focus: Being fearless in your community.

"You can’t just be tough on kids. You can’t just bad mouth young people. You also have to offer them alternatives,” said Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

At the Morial Convention Center during the 19th annual Essence Festival, gun violence took center stage less than 24 hours after two overnight shootings in the Crescent City.

Mayors of New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham and Newark shared ways to reduce violence and murder in America.

“While we hired 800 police officers and did all that, we opened every single recreation center in the city of Atlanta so that the kids have some place to be at 8 o’clock,” said Reed.

Reed said Atlanta’s youth crime is down. Last year, 83 people were murdered in Atlanta, the second lowest number of murders since 1969, compared to New Orleans’ rate of 193.

“That current state of affairs with young African-American men being slaughtered on the streets of America is not OK, because this country has not really ever stood up and said that’s not OK,” said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Eighty-five percent of the city’s murder victims are African-American men between the ages of 16 and 26 years old. They are likely unemployed, high school drop outs with a criminal arrest history.

“We need a surge on the streets and a surge for investments, and if it’s important to America and it’s a national priority economically, socially, morally, spiritually, this nation with find the money,” said Landrieu.

“Then you have young kids who are fearful of someone attacking them. They start packing a gun. Then they feel that a gun is a way to resolve issues, and all of a sudden they get caught up in that wave of violence,” said Mayor William Bell of Birmingham.

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, N.J., called in and participated in the discussion.

Immediately afterward, former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial held a seminar about jobs.